A Welcome Message to New SketchUcation Members

robertsonstewartiain · 26 Aug 2008, 20:03

Hello,

I'm Stew, and architecture student, who has a reasonable understanding of modelling in SketchUp. The only problem I have is exporting my models.

I am not 100% convinced with the finish when exporting from purely SketchUp, so I seek advice and guidance of a suitable render package to use.

I have never used any rendering packages in the past so don't know what to look for. I've read up on Modo, Cheetah3D, Studio Max etc but have no idea on the easiest and best for my needs.

Any guidance/advice on this matter would be much appreciated.

SketchUp is such an important tool during my design work, so would like to make more use of the programme, but present it in a more professional manner.

Kind Regards,

Stewart

solo · 26 Aug 2008, 20:10

Welcome to SCF Stew.

What OS are you using?

What line of work are you in, or what type of renders are you hoping to do?

These questions are in order to best direct you to a renderer that might best suit your needs.

jol · 28 Aug 2008, 10:16

Hi
Been dabbling with sketchup for a few months now (learning mostly) as an aid for pattern creation when making large inflatable objects, namely kite line laundry.
So far off the drawing board has been a 2m ground display spider, which wasn't hugely successful, but not bad, a slightly better 2m carrot top - another ground anchored inflatable. Going out for testing this weekend hopefully is a 6m felix the cat, which was pretty well entirely drawn up in sketchup 'cept for his hands and feet.
I havn't been able to find any designing software that was affordable and could do what I wanted in one complete package. Using sketchup certainly is affordable costing nothing and once I've drawn something up, it is exported into Pepakura http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/ to create the fabric pattern. in most cases the whole process goes thru about 4 different programs from go to whoa.
While not a perfect solution for what I use it for, as I get better at using sketchup and manipulating it for pattern template making, there is definitely a lot of promise there.
cheers
JoL

Chris Fullmer · 28 Aug 2008, 15:26

Very cool Jol. Glad you're here. Kite line laundry sounds interesting, I don't know of anyone else using SketchUp for that. I just went to the Berkeley kite festival a few weeks ago here in California, USA. And I know that Jean Lemire, another long time SU user flys kites. He does 1 man 3 kite ballet stuff up in Canada I think. Anyhow, good to have you!

Chris

robertsonstewartiain · 28 Aug 2008, 19:02

Solo,

Sorry for the delay in replying. Impressive portfolio.

I use Mac OS X 10.5.4 or alternatively I have an older version of 10.3.9 on my PowerBook.

Being an architecture student I create my buildings in SU the drop them into Photoshop to montage the context in.

I'm not looking for anything spectacular at the moment until I grab the basics of rendering packages, just something to take the SU cartoonish appearance, as I see it, away from my models.

Thanks again,

Stew

diabloho · 28 Aug 2008, 19:15

Hello

Im very new to mixing cad and SU, am I able to bring a surface into SU from Civil 3D. I created a dwg with the surface only, but nothing shows up.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

solo · 28 Aug 2008, 19:16

Stew.

There are many free and or cheap rendering solutions available these days, maybe slightly less available options for the Mac platform but nevertheless there are some available and they are pretty good.

I would suggest one of three options:

Podium: http://www.suplugins.com/
This is the easiest one to learn and will be sufficient for your intentions. As you have noticed a large number of my renders as seen on my site was done with Podium. There is a free version available but has a render size limitation.

Kerkythea: http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/

This is totally free and is very powerful, it will take a little time to master but is worth the effort as it is capable of amazing results. All the bells and with the exception of one whistle (displacement) is included, and that last whistle is in the making so I hear.

IDX Renditioner: http://www.idx-design.com/IDX/IDXRenditioner/tabid/709/Default.aspx?gclid=CLrT09WjsZUCFRRhnAodHgk0kQ

Another easy solution and I believe there is some kind of special available or even a free version, This too is more than adequate for your emmediate needs and pretty simple to learn.

Good luck and please post as soon as you have something available.

diabloho · 28 Aug 2008, 20:48

Solo,

Thanks for the quick response! I've tried the Kerkthea & Idx programs now, Idx crashes SU every time I run it and Kerkythea won't open the xml file apparently because it's in 3d.

I'll try the plugins for su next, my boss wanted me to research this for a couple of hours.... I've been off the clock for 3hrs now.

diabloho · 28 Aug 2008, 22:00

I may have a better idea than bringing in the surface and or the feature lines. I now have the polylines at 0 elevation and am connecting the different elevations in a crisscross design and then using the pull command to give the hill the required height. I’m not sure if this is the best way but it is producing results.

wmanning · 29 Aug 2008, 19:54

Diabloho,

Thanks for the heads up that IDX was crashing for you -- I assume that is the free version for PC. A few users have had that problem and we're expecting a fix to be released later today if you're interested.

-- William

Malert · 31 Aug 2008, 18:17

Hi my name is Mikhail, I new to the whole sketchup program as well as this forum and I just wanted to make sure that this was the right place for me to ask future questions about sketchup when I run into problems.

troyhome · 31 Aug 2008, 18:47

You bet it is... welcome to Sketchup (crowd cheers)

CameronVan · 31 Aug 2008, 22:48

Long time SU user.
No longer a lurker here.

Great site!

Chris Fullmer · 1 Sept 2008, 00:10

Cool, good to have you!

Chris

Gaieus · 1 Sept 2008, 10:12

Welcome, Mikhail and yes, this is the place.

Also, glad you broke the silence, Cameron!

Dorsal · 4 Sept 2008, 04:26

Hello - I just joined the Forum, so I can learn Sketchup for drawing plans for my new Phlatprinter. Wahoo!
Not a newbie to solid modeling and drafting, but I use SDRC I-Deas at work and Sketchup speaks in a different language. Hope you folks don't mind dumb questions.

Gaieus · 4 Sept 2008, 06:43

Welcome Dorsal and no, we don't mind dumb questions. We all used to ask them at a certain point.

remus · 4 Sept 2008, 08:15

I still ask them on a regular basis and welcome.

Gaieus · 4 Sept 2008, 08:28

Yeah, I can confirm that!

Tekkybot · 5 Sept 2008, 22:29

@chris fullmer said:

Welcome, and one way to do that is to make the one block. THen select it all and turn it into a component. Then copy and paste the component (or I would use the move tool and hold down ctrl (on a PC)). Move+ctrl = move a copy. So this would would move a copy of the component over to where I want it. Then with the copy of the component, I would select it and activate the scale tool and scale it to negative 1 along the same axis I moved it. So if I moved the copy along the red axis, I would then scale the copy to -1 along the red axis too.

So now I would edit one of the components and it will change both components equally, but mirrored towards eachother, thus giving you the symmetry you need.

It sounds much more complicated than it actually is. I can put together a quick tutorial if my vague instructions don't help, or there probably is one already in the tutorials section on the forum. At any rate, have fun with SketchUp!

Chris

oh, I forgot to mention that you can not push/pull 2 faces simultaneously in SketchUp, though I think there might be an additional script you can download and install that will give you this functionality. Someone else will have to provide a link to this though.

just figured this out